Spotlight on Middlebury Land Trust properties – Tuttle Preserve

#MIDDLEBURY

The many fallen trees at the Tuttle Preserve are pines that were intentionally killed because they were too thickly planted to thrive. (Curtiss Clark photo)

By JANINE SULLIVAN-WILEY

The Spotlight column in the November Bee featured three photos and corresponding hikes. The correct photo/hike pairings are: The top photo is Sperry Pond in the Juniper Hill tract, the middle photo is Lake Elise and the bottom photo shows the new path into Larkin Pond.

For an interesting short hike, consider this month’s property, shown in the photo above, the Tuttle Preserve. This is actually made up of three parcels (Nos. 5, 19 and 25 on the Middlebury Land Trust [MLT] map). They were deeded to the land trust in 1977, 1982 and 1987 by Donald S. Tuttle – the last with James E. Kernan. Together they are about 55 acres. These are part of the 1,891 acres that the MLT owns and/or protects through easement, 1,099 of them in Middlebury. That is roughly 9 percent of the total acreage (11,840) of our town.

The entrance is on South Street not far from its intersection with Sandy Hill Road. Flanked by two stone pillars at its start, the short trail winds generally north (parallel with Sandy Hill Road) except for an s-shaped jog. The preserve was pastureland before 1950, but is mostly forested now, with a plantation of white pines.

If you walk through, you will notice an unusual number of fallen trees in the woods. That represents human, not storm, activity. The pines were thinned when it became apparent that they were too thickly planted to thrive. The thinning was done by a process called girdling, where a strip of bark is removed all the way around the trunk, causing the tree to die.

The dead trees – both standing and fallen – are important habitat for birds and wildlife. Notice a dead tree snag near the entrance with multiple holes made by woodpeckers. These cavities are valuable as they later can be adapted and form nesting places for other birds and wildlife. The fallen trees provide cover and open areas when the forest floor is under snow cover.

With the natural succession process, hardwoods have now grown tall among the conifers. There are several tulip trees near the trail. They are a native species that is an important source of nectar for honeybees in spring. If you hike there in summer, take a moment to smell the leaves of the native spicebush that is abundant along the trail. Now the bees and leaves are gone, and the snows of winter are beginning.

This is a nice short trail, but be cautious farther in from the entrance because it gets rocky. If you venture off the trail to the west and north, you still will be on MLT land, but it is pretty much impenetrable due to thick growth of non-native invasive plants such as bittersweet, multi-flora rose and barberry. This illustrates why it is better to never select nonnatives for your garden as, once they get into the wild, their “easy to grow” characteristics translate into “invasive.” The deer don’t eat them, so they end up out-competing our native shrubs. That holds true for the lovely but also highly invasive burning bush.

We hope you are able to enjoy this or another of the MLT properties as the snow starts to fly!